Basic HTML Version
ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICBL THEORY
53
tivity
in
individual neurons. The ambiguous character of the hypnotic
EEG
may
in
the future be found
to
yield
to
such
an
interpretation.
In
the state of motor
arrest
called
catukpay
the limbs remain in
any posture in which they may be placed.
In
a
subject in full hypnotic
trance the central nervous system itself
is
in
a
similar
state,
for the
subject remaina in any mental posture (including one of activity) sug-
gested
to
him
by the hypnotist. The central nervous system
is
thus im-
mobilized because the activating system has been deprived
of
the
data-
sensory, somesthetic, sensorimotor, affective, intentive, mnemonic-
requisite to the normal direction of psychic activity and response. The
capacity for integration, higher elaboration, and response, however, is
maintained by means of the continued activity of the brain stem reticu-
lar formation and elaborative and effector areas of the
cortex.
Entering
the chain
of
neuronal events a t
a
medial level, the suggestions of the
hypnotist become the positive content of mental experience, which the
subject cannot check against
his
own
percepts because these have been
blocked out of immediate waking consciousness.
The state
of
generalized hypnotic trance, involving
a
general blocking
of primary activity, might appropriately
be
given the name of “general
hypnosis.” States in which a hypnotic inhibition
is
confined to one or
more modalities such
as
the visual or somesthetic might suitably be
described as “differential hypnosis.”
It
is such states of partial hypnosis
that appear to be principally employed
in
hypnotherapy and medical
hypnosis. Hypnotic inhibition
is
not restricted to the channels
so
far
discussed. The varied effects achieved by hypnotic methods indicate that
other neuronal channels can be similarly excluded from central partici-
pation.
The essential unity of hypnotic phenomana pleads
to
common sense
that a single mechanism may underlie the varied behavioral effects.
An
experimentally verified definition of
an
electrophysiological mechanism
or mechanisms of hypnotic dissociation could conceivably lead
to
an
electrogenetic theory of both the minor inhibitions of neurosis and the
major blockages of psychosis.
S-l-v
It
is
theorized that general hypnosis
is
brought about
by
an electrical
blockage between the brain atem reticular formation and the specific-
sensory, parasemry,
and
coordinate neuronal channels; the selective
activity of brain rhythma
of
the delta frequency
is
proposed
as
a pos-
sible mechanism of inhibition.
27
Wolcott Road
Milton
86,
Mass.
Downloaded by [University of Macedonia] at 02:09 29 March 2012